


Moths to Her Flame

by UbiquitousMixie



Category: Major Crimes (TV), The Closer
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-02
Updated: 2014-07-02
Packaged: 2018-02-07 04:45:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1885617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UbiquitousMixie/pseuds/UbiquitousMixie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fritz confronts Sharon about the fact that she’s sleeping with his wife.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moths to Her Flame

**Author's Note:**

> I’m really pleased with how this story came out, and I hope that whoever reads it (and whoever prompted it!) will enjoy it as well. Comments would be wonderful!

I.

His stomach churns in nervous anticipation, the bile threatening to rise and burn in his throat. He's never had trouble sharing before (except for the first time, when he was freshly sober and scared shitless), but this is different. Saying it aloud makes it real, and he's not sure if he's ready to face the truth that's been staring him down for longer than he cares to imagine. If he doesn't make it real, then he can almost pretend that his cookie cutter life isn't broken – perhaps beyond repair.

Fritz Howard needs to say it. He needs to speak the words that have haunted him.

He's meant to share on three separate occasions, but the longer he keeps it inside, the more he craves a drink.

“Would anyone like to share tonight?” asks Robbie, the leader of the group. Her dark, purposeful eyes scan the circle of men and women seated on uncomfortable metal folding chairs.

Fritz sits at the edge of his chair, glancing around the room to make sure he's not about to speak over someone else. He wishes someone _would_ speak up, just so he can hide behind the facade a little longer. When it becomes obvious that no one is eager to pipe up, he clears his throat. “Yes,” he says, his voice cracking. He rubs his face, uncomfortable as all eyes are now settled on him in anticipation of the horrors he has to bare. He takes a bracing breath before he begins, “I think my wife is having an affair.”

“Shit, man...that's fuckin' rough,” interrupts Jose, and Fritz could drown in the flood of pity in the room.

“Go on,” urges Robbie.

Fritz, grateful for the momentary pause, swallows the bile in his throat. “Things have been off for a while now. It was always so easy for me to blame her distance on something else – distracted over work, consumed by legal issues, grieving her mother's death. But now...now I can't blame anyone or anything but her. Now I know for sure that she's been hiding this secret...this affair...and I can't look the other way anymore. I can't keep fooling myself, but that's how I feel: like a goddamn fool.”

“You haven't had a drink, have you?” questions a woman sitting across the circle, who's been chewing on her hair for the last forty minutes. “When my boyfriend cheated on me, I went absolutely mental. I put away a fifth in the time it look to throw the cheating bastard's clothes down the garbage chute.”

Fritz shakes his head firmly in response. “No. No, I haven't...but I've thought about it. In the past, that's probably what I would have done to cope.”

An older man chimes in. “It's a damn good thing you came tonight, man.”

Fritz sighs, feeling defensive. “I'm not...” He stops himself, wanting to hold tightly to the truth. “I don't want to put my sobriety on the line over this. I can't afford to do that. Whatever happens from here, I'm not using it as an excuse to fall off the wagon.”

“That's commendable,” says the hair-chewing woman. “I jumped off with two feet and didn't get back on for a year. Good luck to you.”

He wants to say that he's not like her, but the truth is that he is. He's like all of the people sitting in this room, because he shares the same addiction. It may have been years since he's tasted a drop of alcohol, but it would take only one slip-up to tumble right back into the bottle.

“You may already know this,” Robbie offers cautiously, “but there's another meeting tomorrow night at 7 at First Methodist.” Her suggestion feels like a life jacket, and Fritz takes it.

Nodding, Fritz feels like the weight that has been lifted from his shoulders has now settled in the pit of his stomach.

He'll be at that meeting tomorrow night.

II.

It's past eleven when Fritz hears the front door and the clumsy footfall of his wife. He's lying on his back in bed, watching the baseball game. He should be asleep, but it's the third night this week that Brenda has “worked late,” rendering sleep impossible.

He has no idea who is winning because he has spent the last several hours carried away by his imagination. He can't help himself from imagining the scenarios—the two of them fucking in hotel rooms or cars or offices. He wonders where they go, and who pays. There have been no funny charges on her credit card, and only one suspicious withdrawal from their joint account. When asked, Brenda said that she'd taken the money out to buy an early birthday present for Charlie, and he has had no convincing pretext to confirm her story because Charlie's birthday is a month away. He tries to convince himself that he doesn't need to confirm anything, but his trust is in low supply.

“Sorry it's so late!” Brenda yells, and he hears her heels hit the hardwood floor when she toes them off. Tomorrow, he tells himself, he will not pick them off the floor and put them away for her.

He hears her in the kitchen, opening and closing cupboard doors before she pokes her head around the corner of the bedroom door. “D'you know what happened to that big ol' bottle of Merlot that was on the counter? I can't find it.”

He shrugs, keeping his eyes fixed on the screen for a second or two before finally looking at her. “No. I don't really keep track of your wine,” he lies, his voice a touch abrasive. “You probably finished it and forgot to buy more when you forgot to buy cat food.”

“Oh, shoot,” she says, twisting pink lips into a frown. “I knew I forgot somethin'. Sorry, Fritzi.”

“I picked some up for him on my way home from work.”

Brenda opens her mouth, perhaps to ask why her alcoholic husband didn't buy her more wine too, but she closes it and disappears back into the hall. She opens a few more cupboards, continuing her search. It was easy for Fritz to tell himself that he poured the nearly-full bottle down the drain to rid himself of the temptation, but there was a sense of satisfaction depriving her of a post-tryst drink.

Joel, who has been lying on Fritz's stomach, jumps down, the traitor, and trails behind his wife to schmooze with her ankles in order to con her into feeding him a second helping of dinner. Predictably, he hears the shake of the cat food container and he grits his teeth. “I fed him already,” he calls out. She knows that he feeds Joel every night when he gets home from work and she disregards him anyway. He used to find it endearing, wondering if she were attempting to buy the feline's affections with food, but now it just plain pisses him off—he can't help but imagine her leaving him behind with an obese cat.

She mumbles out an apology, but he hears a pour anyway.

Did she ever respect his wishes? Has his simple requests always fallen on deaf ears? It's hard for him to remember a time when things were good and happy, and the fact depresses the hell out of him. He misses his wife.

When she finally comes into the bedroom, giving up her futile search for her wine, she smiles at him. He can't tell if she means it or not, and it breaks his heart more than the cheating ever could. She comes to the bed, bending down to give him a perfunctory kiss on the lips. He's so caught up in the unexpected display of affection that he almost doesn't notice the smell.

Almost.

She smells not like her perfume, not like her bodywash, not like someone else's scent. She smells clean, scrubbed fresh. She smells like a shower—and he knows there are no showers where she works. The urge to kiss her again passes, replaced instead by the sick feeling that has been a near-constant companion. He's probably giving himself an ulcer.

“How was work?” he manages to ask, taking a slow, deep breath and counting to ten. The accusations are there, ever-present on his tongue, but it's not the right time. Too much of a coward to confront her, he tries to trap her instead. She's a damn good liar, and he wonders if he'll catch her in a lie. He hopes he does—it would be a hell of a lot easier than precipitating the inevitable.

“Dull,” she replies dismissively, moving away from the bed to change into her pajamas. “I could build a second office out of all the paperwork I have to do now!”

His heart beats faster, nauseous from the surge of adrenaline that accompanies his next thought. He waits until she's in the bathroom brushing her teeth before he comes in behind her, kissing the shoulder that is now bare beneath her tank top. There are no scratches, no marks, no hickies—she's careful—but he looks anyway before resting his hands on her hips and catching her gaze in the mirror. He purposely waits for her to rinse out her mouth before he prepares his next trap, not wanting to give her an excuse to think of a lie. He forces a gentleness into his voice that he doesn't feel before he wraps his arms around her waist. She feels so good and yet so strange to him. It's not until now, when he has her in this familiar embrace, that he realizes how much he misses her.

“You've been working late a lot these days...what if we used those overtime checks to take a weekend away?” He wants so desperately for her to agree, to just ask him here he wants to go. He could let go of the anger and the suspicion if she could just prove him wrong, if she would only--

“Oh, this weekend? I've got a work thingie.”

And just like that, a great big sinking feeling swallows his hope and leaves nothing behind but renewed suspicion. “Oh yeah? What kind of work thingie?” He keeps himself relaxed; he doesn't know how to play this yet, and she doesn't miss a cue. He's not ready for her to know that he knows.

“Some sort of trainin' or somethin'. Who even knows. They don't tell me anythin'...they just expect me to show up, bright eyed and bushy tailed.” She wiggles out of his grasp, which has loosened considerably, and ducks behind him to use the toilet. “Waste of time, if you ask me.”

He lets her go to the bathroom in peace, getting into bed. He shuts off the game, not caring to check the final score. It doesn't matter. Nothing really matters all that much anymore.

III.

He wouldn't have called it 'fun' to be the FBI's liaison to the LAPD when Brenda worked there—her continuous efforts to subvert his own work had been tiresome and frustrating, but he had dismissed that annoyance because he got to see his wife. He loved that about his job because it had felt like he shared her with the job, and he was okay with sometimes playing second fiddle to the work that sparked a fire in her.

Now that his main point of contact is the woman who is fucking his wife, Fritz hates it. He'd ask for the role to be reassigned if he didn't have a masochistic need to keep periodic tabs on Raydor—not that she'd ever break the professional veneer and expose some hidden truth about her affair.

Brenda's “work thingie” turned out to be complete bullshit, which he had suspected. A few calls made to the right people confirmed his fears. He'd thrown up twice before she returned home that evening, presenting him a vague overview of her “training.” She had even prepared an excuse for why she hadn't picked up when he called her at lunch time. The lies are becoming so vague and so easy to disprove that he wonders if she's _trying_ to get caught. Is she taunting him? Avoiding a confrontation by provoking him into asking? Is she becoming careless because there are feelings involved now?

He feels sick all the time. He thinks about booze all the time. He's been to so many meetings that he's bumped into Andy Flynn once or twice. He can't stand it anymore.

After wrapping up a particularly gruesome case, Fritz steels his nerves and summons the strength to do what needs to be done. “Got a minute, captain?”

Sharon Raydor smiles at him across the Murder Room and gestures toward her office. “Of course, Agent Howard.”

Once they are seated in their respective chairs, her behind the large, imposing desk and him in the visitor's chair across from her, he finds himself unable to look her in the eye. He takes a bracing breath, knowing she will not prompt him to speak, before he meets her steady gaze. Her expression is impenetrable. He has no idea what she's thinking, and he can feel his own features threatening to crumble. She can probably read him like a book.

It's now or never. Time to chase the truth, wherever it may lead.

“I know that you're fucking my wife.”

The words are bitter in his mouth. To her credit, Sharon's face almost doesn't change, as if she's been expecting this for days, months, years. She folds her hands and places them calmly on the desk. “Have you spoken to—no, of course you haven't.” She closes her mouth, pressing her lips into a firm line before she continues. “I won't speak for Brenda. You should be having this conversation with her, not with me.”

“I'm talking to you, not to my wife.”

“And just what would you like to discuss, Agent Howard? What do you hope to gain from this conversation other than making us both uncomfortable?”

Her calm, even demeanor is making him wish he had never opened his mouth. He wants her to look embarrassed, ashamed, accusatory—anything other than this blank mask. “I don't give a damn if you're uncomfortable. You should be. So you don't deny it then?”

“I think we're well beyond deniability at this point,” she says with a sigh.

Rather than validate his suspicions and justify his paranoia, her confirmation only serves to sicken him. Perhaps, in the end, it would have been easier to become a drunk again instead. “How long has this been going on?”

She casts her eyes behind him at the open shades, observing her team before turning to meet his eyes. “I don't really think that it's my place to answer that question. That's between you and Brenda.”

“ _You_ are between me and my wife,” he spits out, his hair on edge. This was a mistake, but it's too late to turn back now. “Do you honestly think I'd be asking you if I thought I'd get a straight answer from her?”

She tilts her head in what resembles a nod, as if to agree that Brenda would lie through her teeth if asked the same question. “Allow me to be frank with you. I'm not proud of what we're doing, but I'm in love with your wife. I will not stop seeing her simply because you've finally acknowledged the elephant in the room.”

“You love her. Well, excuse me. _That_ makes it all right. _That_ makes it noble, doesn't it?” He sees red. He wants to throw up. He wants a drink. It's not a surprise to him that she has not broken down into apologetic sobs, begging forgiveness for her indiscretions. Her tone makes him feel like he's a child being chastised by the school matron. He feels like a fool. “So what then, huh? I'm supposed to just look the other way while you keep on fucking my wife? Or am I supposed to just step aside and let the two of you run off into the goddamn sunset together?”

“That's your choice, Agent Howard.”

He barks out a laugh, shifting restlessly in his chair. “Those are my options? What about option c, where you leave my wife alone and show my marriage a little respect?”

“The only person disrespecting your marriage is Brenda. I didn't make her cheat on you, Fritz.” Hearing his name rankles him, and he cringes. “She made that decision on her own. We each have a choice to make here. I've told you that I already made my choice.”

He takes a calming breath and stands up, rubbing his sweaty palms against his slacks. “I used to respect you, you know,” he says through gritted teeth, as if his opinion of her matters at all. “I really thought highly of you—I thought you of all people would do the right thing when it mattered most, but I can see that you're just as selfish as she is. You have absolutely no decency at all.”

She blanches a little, and the sight of it is undeniably satisfying. She licks her lips, tilting her head slightly before she addresses him again. “You and I have a lot in common. We both want her. We're both at her mercy. We've made our beds, Fritz. We are moths to her flame.”

He closes the door quietly behind him, leaving before he loses the will to remain calm. He briskly passes the members of the Major Crimes team, ignoring them as he makes his way to the elevator. He needs some fresh air before he throws something or cries or vomits.

Fritz isn't sure what he expected from this confrontation, but it's not this. The fact is, he has no idea what he wants anymore. Sharon Raydor had been unwavering in her assurance that it's Brenda that she wants. He's not sure if he wants Brenda Leigh Johnson—not now, not after the deceit and the betrayal. Maybe she and Raydor deserve each other after all. Maybe he'd be happier if he did let her go.

His thumb brushes against the wedding band around his finger, and his chest tightens. He cannot be so cavalier and dismissive, not when he _does_ still love his wife. He misses their tenderness, their commitment, their devotion to each other. He can't ask Sharon when that went away; that evaporated long before she ever entered the picture.

_We've made our beds, Fritz._

Sharon's words echo in his head. He could lie in the bed he's made—he could look the other way—or he could walk away. Either way, he'll have trouble getting back to sleep.

_We’re moths to her flame._

Brenda is going to burn him up.

The elevator dings as it stops on the ground floor. In his pocket, his cell phone burrs. A quick glance confirms that Brenda is calling. Has Sharon already told her about their little talk? He lets the call go to voicemail.

Before he can talk to his wife and finally fight his way to the truth, he needs to go to a meeting.

\---


End file.
